Valve Making Steam Box to Compete with Living Room Consoles

Earlier this month, Valve officially rolled out Steam’s Big Picture mode. That makes it possible for gamers to hook their PCs up to their televisions and use compatible controllers to dive into large screen gaming.

If your PC is close enough to your TV or you have a gaming capable laptop, you can enjoy the full scope of your Steam library in Big Picture mode. Honestly, as a gamer with a growing Steam library, this feature is sweet. Too bad it’s limited by the need to place your PC near your TV.

Valve is looking to solve that problem with a new piece of hardware specifically tailored for playing Steam games. Gabe Newell, Valve’s co-founder, spoke with Kotaku about making this new hardware for the living room. He told them that they’d release a piece of hardware that would run Steam right away and stand to compete with console manufacturers for living room space.

Newell also indicated that their system would be more closed off than a traditional PC.

“Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment…If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that’s what some people are really gonna want for their living room.

The nice thing about a PC is a lot of different people can try out different solutions, and customers can find the ones that work best for them.”

That quote suggests that the Steam Box, what the gaming community has been calling it, is not just a PC.

Valve expects to be selling these gaming systems within the next year.